Functionalist Approaches To English-Chinese Translation Of Political News Language

English news is one of the major channels to get information about the outside world. With studies on journalistic English being relatively adequate, a sub-variety is studied by the author, i.e. political news English. Concerning the complex relations among journalism, politics and translation, studies are conducted at two levels as follows:On the one hand, studies at macro level start with rules in journalism and illustrate the power of control exerted by newsmakers and the general principles for political news translators to follow. For example: the role of newsmakers in news translation, translators'roles/tasks, political correctness of political language, political ground translators should stand on, translators'responsibility to the society and news receivers, etc. On the other hand, studies at micro level summarize the linguistic features of political news English and try to take functionalist approaches to political news translation.Functionalist approach is considered to have the core as Skopotheorie which holds that translation strategies depend on the function/Skopos of target text. In this theory, the authority of source text is challenged. Source text is seen as merely"an offer of information"based on which"a new offer of information"is created. This well rationalizes necessary adaptation in political news English translation. Functionalists take a bird-eye view over the translating process, examining how a translating activity is initiated, organized and conducted, what kind of roles various participants play in the process, etc. Meanwhile, a micro-level study on language and translation is never neglected. And it is held that"text typologies help the translator specify the appropriate hierarchy of equivalence levels needed for a particular translation Skopos"(Reiss: 1984). It can be seen that functionalist approaches serve well for studies at both macro and micro levels and will finally conclude at valid general principles (macro) and applicable translation strategies (micro).